Report on Environmental Court Cases

Author

Affiliation

Mojtaba Abolfazli, Adam S. Cohen

Planning and Research Division, Policy and Planning Department

This report presents statistics on both criminal and civil cases filed in Environmental Court (HRS 604A) between July 1, 2015¹ and May 31, 2025.² Greater detail is provided on criminal cases, as they make up the majority of those brought before Environmental Court. Note that TC, TI, and TP case types were excluded; however, motor vehicle charges could appear under case types CC or CW.

Criminal Cases

Case Filing

Here we look at cases filed in Environmental Court by circuit and type of case. For cases involving more than one charge, the most severe charge was selected to define the case.

The following tables show cases filed in Environmental Court by Circuit and District Courts during the study period, categorized by type of charge. The charges have been grouped into \(12\) broader categories to provide a clearer and more concise representation. See the Appendix to review the mappings for how charges were grouped. As shown, the majority of cases were filed in District Courts.

Circuit Court	1st Circuit	2nd Circuit	3rd Circuit	5th Circuit	Total
Charge Category
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District Court	1st District	2nd District	3rd District	5th District	Total
Charge Category
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A detailed breakdown of cases by court and fiscal year is presented in the table below.

Case Termination

This section provides statistics on cases terminated in Environmental Court, broken down by court and fiscal year. Terminations are defined by two status categories: CLOSEDJ and CLOSEDS. Separate tables are provided for Circuit and District Courts.

Circuit Court	1st Circuit	2nd Circuit	3rd Circuit	5th Circuit	Total
Fiscal Year
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District Court	1st District	2nd District	3rd District	5th District	Total
Fiscal Year
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Charge Disposition

Below, we provided the disposition of charges in District and Circuit Courts. Other in disposition category includes Deferred Plea, Committed to Circuit Court, Remanded to District Court, Stricken, and NOA disposition code.

In contrast to the tables above, the charge disposition table includes all charges on a case. That is, for cases with multiple charges, all are counted below, not just the charge that defined a case in the case filing and termination tables above.

By May 31, 2025, approximately \(90\%\) of charges in District Courts and \(91\%\) in Circuit Courts had been disposed.

Civil Cases (Circuit Court only)

This section presents statistics on civil cases filed in Environmental Court between July 1, 2015, and May 31, 2025. In total, \(128\) cases were inintiated during this period. Cases were categorized based on nature of action (NOA) codes as provided in the Appendix.

Circuit Court	1st Circuit	2nd Circuit	3rd Circuit	5th Circuit	Total
Fiscal Year
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The table below shows the breakdown of types of civil cases filed in Circuit Courts. Note that \(8\) cases did not have any case type assigned. These cases were combined with cases that had Type Not Assigned Yet as case type value.

Circuit Court	1st Circuit	2nd Circuit	3rd Circuit	5th Circuit	Total
Case Type
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The table below shows the status of civil cases filed in Environmental Court during the study period. As of May 31, 2025, \(75\) out of \(128\) cases had been terminated, and one additional case had been adjudicated but not yet terminated.

Circuit Court	1st Circuit	2nd Circuit	3rd Circuit	5th Circuit	Total
Case Status
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Appendix

Charge-to-Category Mapping

The following table shows mappings of charges into categories or criminal cases.

Charge Code	Charge Category
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Definition of Civil Case Types

The table below shows the mapping of NOA codes to case types for civil cases. Note that cases without NOA code were assigned to case type Type Not Assigned Yet.

NOA Code	Case Type
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Footnotes

1. In previous reports, pre-2015 cases were lumped with 2015 data. In the current report, they are excluded, which is why there may be more of a gap between filings aross reports for 2015.

2. Data is reported by fiscal year, covering a 12 month period running from July 1st of one year to June 30th of the following year, except for FY2025 data, which covers an 11 month period ending on May 31st. This report was published before the last month of data became available.